The Artificial Silk Girl

by Irmgard Keun

  “Love is more than that,” says Brenner.

  “Love is a lot of different things,” I say.

  “Love is not business,” he says.

  “Pretty girls are business,” I say, “and that has nothing to do with love. I know, I know — love so well — but I don’t want to know it, I don’t want to.”

  “But I have a longing in me,” says Brenner. Why is it that his eyes are turning even more dead than before? I’m going to kiss him.

  I love you, my brown madonna — Virgin Mary, please pray for us — those dead eyes are telling me: “Doris, the time has come. The day after tomorrow I’m going to go into a nursing home.” The wife can’t handle it any more and wants it this way. But now she’s sorry, because this is the end of her majestic rule since she has no more subjects. No one can be emperor all by himself.

  All three of us are sitting in the kitchen. He’s propped up on the chair, the wife is near the stove, and I’m in front of the bed — we’re all standing there — “Frau Brenner, your husband wants to spend one evening just walking around the streets — I’m going to lead him — because he’s going to the home, and there he’s not going to see anything anymore,” I say. He doesn’t say a word, but earlier he was begging me. I have a bouquet of violets pinned to my lapel — it was given to me by a suitor yesterday — and it’s breathing all blue in the kitchen. She’s standing there, his wife — long and thin and with greedy teeth: “I’m going with him.”

  Her voice knocks out my violets. “He’s going with me. I’m his wife.”

  “I’m going to go with him. I can show him a lot.”

  And he’s not saying a word. The battle was going on above his head. All men are cowards. Then his wife starts to scream about all that she’s done for him.

  What use is it? He can’t see us — but she smells old and I smell young. I don’t love him, but I’m fighting for our evening because he wants it, I can feel it in my knees. Perhaps because it’s the greatest gift for a woman to be allowed to be good to a man. And nothing else. And so I thank him for allowing me to be good to him, because usually they only love the nasty ones. And it’s much more exhausting to be nasty. That kitchen voice is killing my violets, they are dying right into my skin. And here I’m fighting for his wishes, because he’s tired. “My child.” My voice is trembling: “Dear Frau, whatever belongs to you — just for one evening — one night off — we’ll come back, I beg you.” “What nonsense to be begging! Her kind knows only to scream every cent she’s earned through her yellow teeth. But I know what I want — my child, I’m not afraid — I still have some money. We can go anywhere we want.”

  “It’s your choice,” screams the Yellow Teeth. Poor men, they always have to choose — Hindenburg — women — communists — women. “Listen Frau, just one evening and only for three hours — there’ll be enough hours left for you — so many.” Her hands with their rusty skin are dangling in front of me. “Yes,” she says.

  So let’s go — we leave — crisscrossing Berlin — we take taxis — his skin smells like black and white birch trees, that’s how happy he is — because those don’t smell — you can only see them, but he can’t — that’s why he smells like them.

  “It’s hard carrying a dead thing around with you,” he says. True. My uncle once had to carry a dead body up from the river at night and he told me: “Dead bodies are heavy.” Is everything a dead body? Let’s get off and keep walking — with music in the background — and he was young and drowned in a kayak and with a white sweater. And he had a girl. And the moon was shining, the sun had borrowed it — let’s move on.

  We drink vodka in a Russian restaurant. They have schnapps here that tastes like a meadow — “and you know, the wallpaper, it’s covered with flowers that are laughing their heads off” — I love you because I’m good to you.

  And we keep going — there’s a hard wind blowing and voices and streets — “Can you smell it if it’s getting dark?” Something inside me dissolves in so much calmness — I’m holding his hand and he trusts me, when I guide him — I must not become this way. How am I ever going to get anywhere? Let’s eat something.

  We enter a restaurant on Wittenbergplatz. We’re sitting by the window. He has to talk to me, or else I won’t know that he’s having a good time, because his eyes are mute and his mouth is bitter and all he’s got left is his voice and a light. And through the slit in the dark forest green curtains, one can see the shimmer of red neon lights from afar. “Are you happy?” Sure I am. Beer is good when you’re thirsty. “Does it taste blonde?”

  Let’s move on — I’m afraid that he’s no longer happy, but there’s a feeling of trust emanating from his arm. I’m his salvation at every intersection.

  He’s sucking in the air and asks me: “Are there any stars?”

  I look for them.

  “Yes, there are stars,” I lie and I give them to him — there are no stars — but there must be some behind the clouds and they must be shining inside-out tonight. I love stars, but I hardly ever notice them. I guess when you’re blind, you realize how much you forgot to see.

  And then we go to a café — I give my heart to you, only to you — the violinist has a way of singing! We have something sweet that tastes pink — be happy — I want to, want to so badly. That let me get drunk.

  “Doris — a forest,” he says.

  A forest? — but we’re in Berlin. I’m not looking at anybody — I’m living only for you — that guy over there — live your own life, something from Sunday school which I used to skip and would go dancing instead — what do I care about God, while I’m still wondering where babies really come from — but you find out soon enough.

  If only he would talk! We need to move on — occasionally there’s half a star coming out but it can’t compete with the neon lights and all that buzz around us. Sometimes I close my eyes for a moment when we get to a bus stop — strange how all those sounds enter you — it’s getting quieter and quieter — let’s go to the Vaterland. They’ve got to still be awake there. And we get on the bus and the bus skips across the pavement with us, even though it’s so big and fat — oops — and it’s so crowded and all the people are breathing into each oth-er’s faces — and the upholstery exudes a strange smell. Berlin. It’s Berlin I’m showing him.

  The Vaterland has spectacularly elegant staircases like a castle with countesses in stride, and landscapes and foreign countries and Turkish and Vienna and summer homes of grapevine and that incredible Rhine valley with natural scenarios that produce thunder. We are sitting there and it’s getting so hot that the ceiling is coming down — the wine makes us heavy — “Isn’t it beautiful here and wonderful?” It is beautiful and wonderful. What other city has this much to offer, rooms and rooms bordering on each other, forming a palatial suite? All the people are in a hurry — and sometimes they look pale under those lights, then the girls’ dresses look like they’re not paid off yet and the men can’t really afford the wine — is nobody really happy? Now it’s all getting dark. Where is my shiny Berlin? If only he weren’t getting quieter by the minute.

  Let’s go. In the Westend, I know something wonderful — it’s expensive — but I think I can still swing it. It’s an elegant restaurant — I once went there with the intellectual elite — they have wine directly from Italy and people get wonderfully drunk and there are incredibly interesting women there and elegant people and everything is mysterious with low ceilings — and nobody has to feel ashamed for being different from the way they are during the day.

  And I ask him: “Are you tired?”

  “No, I’m not tired. I really want to thank you — do you think the home is going to have a garden?”

  “Yes,” I tell him. “There’s going to be a garden.”

  All I want to do is cry. Let’s go — everything looks different all of a sudden — in front of the Vaterland, someone is beating a poor girl — she’s screaming — and a police officer arrives — a lot of people are standing around,
not knowing where to go, and there’s no glamour and nobody there — only dead tombstones — and if someone looks at you it’s because he wants something from you — but why doesn’t he want anything good? His leg movements are heavy and I can feel the pressure coming from him and now his heaviness is in me as well.

  We’re at the Italian place — they must not notice that he can’t see. That would make them angry, because it disrupts the happy atmosphere. “It’s nice here, isn’t it?” Mosaic lanterns and quiet corners, but not the sleazy kind, much more elegant and in a deep red — the music is singing and there’s an interesting buffet with oranges that look like leftover suns.

  A St. Pauli girl, a girl from the Reeperbahn. “Oh my God! That’s so zippy!” That’s what Therese would say, because that’s what her man used to say all the time — and that’s the only sentence of his that she can remember. I’m going to start crying any minute now — and I’m telling jokes — my voice flickers like a fire that’s about to die. He forces himself to laugh and says: “It’s wonderful.” But I don’t believe him.

  So he’s not in love with me. That would salvage everything — but this way we’re caught in this cold circle that only our heads can meet in and nothing else — and sometimes I have a feeling as if he were flying away from me on a heap of white cold snow — and then I’m freezing to death with loneliness — he’s got to help me for a change — and when he’s at the home and I don’t see him anymore, he should have three good thoughts for me every day — that would really make a difference to me. I would find that very comforting — but maybe that’s already too much to ask.

  It’s possible that I did love him a little bit — it’s just that I don’t want to and I’m fighting it because of my career and because it would only be trouble. But what can you do. You always notice too late that you’re getting that stupid pain deep down in your stomach — he really could take my hand now.

  “The city isn’t good and the city isn’t happy and the city is sick,” he says — “but you are good and I thank you for that.”

  I don’t want him to thank me. I just want him to like my Berlin. And now everything looks so different to me — I’m drunk and I’m dreaming with my eyes open — a St. Pauli girl, a girl from the Reeperbahn … and the band would much rather go home — a Reeperbahn girl really is much too sad a creature that she should constantly be cheering. And sometimes somebody is laughing — and that laugh is stuffing all of yesterday’s and today’s anger back into the mouth that it’s oozing from. And I close my eyes — there’s all that talk coming from so many mouths. They’re flowing into each other like a river full of dead bodies. It’s their funny words that have already been drowned in booze before they’ve had a chance to arrive at the next person’s ear — and my uncle once carried one, with a white sweater and the moon was shining — why did we have to think of him earlier?

  It was in St. Pauli near Altona that I was abandoned … I love those songs — and at the table next to us, two men and a lady are introducing each other and are looking each other up and down with a friendly mistrust in their eyes and at first they want to believe only the bad things.

  I’m talking to him and I finally want to find a word that makes me be with him — God, I can’t stand it any more — let’s go — What’s wrong with me? — I want to kill that feeling inside of me. You have to be drunk to sleep with men, to have a lot of money — that’s what you have to want and never think of anything else. How else are you going to stand it — What’s wrong with this world?

  And outside there’re still no stars in the sky. We’re leaving — I think the Memorial Church is telling a lie, saying it’s a church — because if it were one, you should be able to go there and stay there right now. Where can I find love and something that doesn’t fall apart right away? I’m so drunk, but I have to watch him — such a strange arm — back to his wife — back to the kitchen.

  “The air is good now. It’s lonely,” he says — at Kurfürstendamm it’s getting full again. At the corner, there are the voices of four young men. They have a musical instrument and the four of them are singing with a lot of hope in their voices: that’s youth — that’s love … and we understand, and we listen, because a movement of his arm signals me to stop — and then they collect money and they’re boys with happy faces, because they’re not going to let themselves be broken and they’re not afraid and they’re walking with a secure step. And then they sing again, and everything in their voices is young — but I’m not old yet either, am I?

  “That’s beautiful,” he says and he’s breathing the voices and the air and the half stars — and then he searches his pockets for those pennies he saved up for tobacco at the home — and he gives them to the boys and says: “That was beautiful, four young voices that are holding together. Full of force, full of life, outside in the fresh air — that was beautiful.”

  But we didn’t have to go all that way and all over the city for that. And all of a sudden, he tries to walk by himself — how can I let him! — but I’m very tired now.

  Rannowsky from our building, who is a word that I’m ashamed to put on paper, has been arrested! Because he almost killed one of his women and she reported him. And now she keeps passing us on the stairs and her name is Hulla and she has a wide sagging face and hair that’s been dyed yellow. Only blondes can look really mean, and it’s hard to believe how a man could.… And she wears cheap, tight-fitting wool jumpers that emphasize her body shape in a vulgar way. So she stops me on the staircase and starts talking to me and I was beginning to feel creepy, because she comes from a terrible underworld that’s completely foreign to me. That’s how low you can sink. I was nice to her, because I was afraid of her and because nobody else is. I was a star compared to her.

  The funny thing is that for every star there’s one that shines even brighter. And she was trembling and begging me for money so she can feed the goldfish, because she’s not able to make much money right now, that’s how badly he’s beaten her up.

  And now he’s in jail. And he’s threatening her in his letters to her, telling her to take care of his goldfish, Lolo in particular: “Take care of my beloved babies, woman. Or else I’m going to break every bone in your body once I get out of here.”

  So we went upstairs to look at the fish and they were swimming back and forth and Lolo looked fat and lazy. “I just hope he’s not sick,” Hulla screamed in a high-pitched voice. And she looked terrifying with her face full of bandaids.

  Tilli’s Albert is back from Essen. “But you can stay,” she tells me.

  Sometimes he touches my arm in a way that ends my loneliness. But he’s Tilli’s!

  I’ve made it. I am — Oh God! — mother, I’ve gone on a shopping spree. A little fur jacket and a hat and the finest saveloy — Is it a dream? I’m powerful. I’m bursting with excitement.

  “Would you please air out my kimono,” I tell my lady-in-waiting who always arrives in the disguise of a cleaning woman.

  And he’s calling me saying: “Dollface, fix yourself up. We’re going to the Scala tonight.”

  And I’m living in a suite on Kurfürstendamm. Sometimes I spend three hours in the tub, bathing in scented bath salts.

  He’s like a jolly pink rubber ball. I met him in a café on Unter den Linden, where they play first-class music. I looked at him, he looked at me. I reminded him of a girl he had been in love with in high school — this has got to be three-hundred years ago, that’s how old he is, but that’s exactly what’s so comforting to me.

  I’m walking on carpets. My foot is sinking in as I’m turning on the radio: love, love is a heavenly force. And I’m so-o-o beautiful. And I almost have to cry, because now I don’t know where to go with all that beauty — for whom am I beautiful? For whom?

  He has a company that’s struggling, and such comforting eyes.

  “Alexander,” I say, “Alexander, apple of my eye, king of hearts, my round little Gouda, I’m so-o-o happy!”

  “Do you love me, ju
st a teensy-weensy bit, my dove, or is it just my money?” he asks full of fear — and that moves me so much that I actually start to have some feelings for him.

  For hours on end, Alexander tells me about his childhood and I’m listening, because he gave me the money to pay back Therese plus a portable gramophone and eighteen records by Richard Tauber, and one with my voice on it. I recorded it at Tietz, and I said: “Therese, I love you. Don’t forget me. I might become a star in the movies, because Alexander thinks I have lots of talent. I’m riding around in a Mercedes and even the nails on my feet are polished, and I’m educating myself, and sometime I say ‘C’est ça lala.’ And I’m a lady. My shirts are made of embroidered crêpe lavable from Paris. I have a bra that cost 11 marks, and a pair of shoes made from genuine emu leather. I wish you could see me! ‘Madam, where would you like me to take you?’ asks Alexander’s chauffeur. Good-bye Therese.”

  Once my mother wanted to have a canary. Therefore I had nine canaries transferred to her together with crystal flasks and lingerie and the like. I did the same for Therese. It’s because I’m kind of homesick — and I’m so elegant, I could address myself as lady. I pick up the phone from my bed with its silk cover and dial a number and say: “Alexi, my ruby-red morning sun, why don’t you bring me a pound of Godiva!”

  “Aye, aye, dollface,” he says, and I stay in bed resting in my lace nightgown or negligée. Sometimes I feel just the slightest bit bored. I gave Tilli a kayak.

  Alex says: “Come on, dollface, let’s have some champagne. My little Mickey Mouse, you’re like a drop of dew.”

  He’s a gentleman, even though he’s short and fat. All his friends — all of them big industrialists — say to him: “Old curmudgeon, where did you find that beautiful woman?” and they kiss my hand.